Why Aren’t Professors Braver?
I really like professors. I’m a professor, my wife is a professor, and most of my friends are professors. I heard about a retirement community in Arizona that’s specifically for professors, and if I ever end up in a retirement community, that’s where I’d like to go.
It’s not just that professors are my people; I think there are objectively good things about us. We tend to be pretty smart. We are sometimes socially inept, but in a sweet way. We are genuinely excited about ideas — professors spend a lot of time thinking about questions such as the origin of the universe, the nature of truth, the evolution of species, and whether Shakespeare discovered the unconscious. We are often generous. For instance, many professors spend a lot of time mentoring students in ways that aren’t requirements of the job and don’t lead to any tangible rewards. And we are a peaceable lot. If you’re sitting at a bar, minding your own business, and some drunk takes a swing at you, the drunk is unlikely to be a professor.
But I don’t think we are very brave. We don’t tend to be troublemakers. I’m not denying that many of us say and write things that upset the public. Professors make bold and shocking claims — there is no immaterial soul; there are many genders; Shakespeare didn’t write Hamlet; empathy makes the world worse; and so on. Philosophers are particularly provocative in this regard. I’ve heard them argue that babies don’t feel pain, that dogs and chairs don’t exist (because the only things that really exist are elementary particles), that atoms are conscious, and that life is terrible and we’d all be better off dead. Bold stuff!
But this boldness has its limits. It doesn’t typically extend to interactions with our colleagues. We want them to like us, and so we work to avoid their disapproval. We don’t want to make trouble.
